I guess I got on a bit of a rant on the concept of Chutzpah this week, so I will leave you with one more post on some of the things in my life that I view as chutzpah that I run into in the financial world of today:

Chutzpah is the way to go!

Bank Fees: An institution that used to simply make money by loaning your money to other folks and doing business in the greedy area between loan rates and savings rates, now charges over $10 a month for the privilege to put your money in their bank. You have heard my rants about Free Banking before, but the banking racket has a corner on chutzpah, that is for sure.

Credit Cards: after watching the PBS Front line special The Card Game, the entire Credit Card business is a shrine to Chutzpah. The Canadian Capitalist has a link to the special, well worth watching, but unmitigated temerity and complete contempt for your customers is so prevalent in the Credit Card world, it should be renamed the Screw You We Get Your Money Card business. The fact it still exists and is not very regulated, shows that Chutzpah works.

Gas Prices in Canada: How gas prices are set in Canada is claimed to be by free market pressures, I disagree. To tell a consumer that gas that has been refined and delivered and sitting in holding tanks at your local gas station has gone up in price, due to International Shortages, is Chutzpah.

Financial Bail Outs in the U.S.: that was gall, and chutzpah combined. TO have created the entire credit crisis via your own foolish (if not illegal) practices, and then going hat in hand to the government asking for Trillions of dollars to bail you out is chutzpah. You lose consumers money, through flawed methodologies, and then ask for more money from that consumer (through their taxes) to not lose more money? Staggering.

Anybody else wishing to chime in with their own private financial chutzpah examples, please feel free to comment!

Chutzpah?

For those of you who still don’t get the concept of chutzpah the best explanation I can find is from Leo Rostein (author of the Joys of Yiddish ), who stated:

“…that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”